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The Logic of Scientific Discovery Study Guide

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by Karl Popper
About 42 pages (12,594 words)
The Logic of Scientific Discovery Summary

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Themes

Science is Deductive, not Inductive

Popper is critical of those who follow inductive theory for believing that scientific theory starts with stray elementary perceptions. These perceptions are metaphysical and lead to infinite regression. They do not allow for explorations of the regularity of theories. A theory should lead to deducing more empirical statements than the number that can be deduced from the initial condition without the theory.

At critical junctures in each argument, Popper described how inductivists use a term, theory or process and why that approach is suspect. For example, the fact that inductivists see statistical stability as a fundamental law of nature not reducible to a simpler statement is for Popper a logically unacceptable tautology.

He is clear that deterministic positivist assumptions are not tolerated in his approach to probability. In particular, he.....

This is a free excerpt of 135 words. This section contains 729 words. This study guide contains 12,594 words (approx. 42 pages at 300 words per page).

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The Logic of Scientific Discovery from BookRags and Gale's For Students Series. ©2005-2006 Thomson Gale, a part of the Thomson Corporation. All rights reserved.

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